Bad News Barrett Speaks On King Of The Ring, His New Persona, I-C Title

The following are highlights of a recent Ring Rust Radio interview with Bad News Barrett:

On whether the Intercontinental Title is more meaningful now that the world titles are unified: “I think any time there’s more focus on a particular title, the better it is for the title holder. I think with the reduction in the number of titles and now with the combined World and WWE Championship titles, I think it definitely puts a lot more emphasis on the Intercontinental Championship. Also, considering the fact that The Shield have had the U.S title with Dean Ambrose carrying that for a while and hasn’t been defending it at all. I can’t remember the last time he defended it. I think about six months or so since he last defended it, so I think that puts even more emphasis on the intercontinental title as the main secondary title in WWE. So definitely, I’d like to get my hands on it and pick up that IC title once again.”

On whether he’d like to see the King of the Ring return: “Personally, I love tournaments and I think American sports in general have that sort of playoff format for championships where you need to beat a team to get to the next round and obviously World Cup Soccer is set up that way too, so for me tournaments are great. It gives the fans a reason to be invested in something, it’s not just a series of cold matches, and I think with each match having something at stake is the key. It drives fans’ interest in the matches that we’re putting on and it certainly means something when someone can get to a final with the champion because you have to work pretty hard to get there. So hopefully that means fans are more invested in it, and I think it provides some good entertainment. And to what you said about the King of the Ring, I was a big fan of that when I was younger, so if that comes back, I’d be very happy about that.”

On the creation of the Bad News character: “At the time when I came up with it, I wasn’t really doing anything too much on the show, I was on the low, cold matches and I wasn’t really involved in any program or anything, so I felt like I wanted to do something different. The guy at WWE.com suggested that they use me in some way on the JBL and Cole show, so I had to think about it and Cody Rhodes came up with the idea originally where I would just keep giving bad news to everyone in somewhat of a reflection of my personality in the locker room. Thankfully it seemed to work in the form we were using it at the time and people responded to it and we took it from there. In terms of how it will evolve, that’s very difficult to predict. I wasn’t expecting people to be cheering me at the Hall of Fame when I came out to give bad news and the response I got later, the kind of baby face response where people were looking forward to hearing my bad news, it wasn’t something I anticipated. So, it’s something I’ll just go with the flow and see how people respond and that really dictates how a character will evolve.”